


What Will Be

by okayokayigive



Series: Ouroboros [1]
Category: Doctor Who (2005), Doctor Who (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-18
Updated: 2013-04-18
Packaged: 2017-12-08 21:14:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/766080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okayokayigive/pseuds/okayokayigive
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is the story of two broken soldiers and the little girl that saved them. This is the story of how scenes will always play as written, even if the characters change. This is the story of the day “what if” became “what will be”.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part 1

In the years that follow 2006, Rose Tyler dreams in “what if”s. What if she had been able to control the vortex? What if she hadn’t let go of the lever? What if she’d never known names like Satellite Five and Bad Wolf Bay? What if she’d never said forever?

But the universe is infinite, and the power of the TARDIS is unmatched. She may not have been able to save her Rose…but in one tiny offshoot, in one otherwise unimportant (and therefore ignored) timeline, she could provide a little bit of happily ever after.

This is the story of two broken soldiers and the little girl that saved them. This is the story of how scenes will always play as written, even if the characters change. This is the story of the day “what if” became “what will be”.

—

On the outskirts of a great battle, a war to end all wars, a broken man lay dying on the floor of his magnificent ship. In fleeting moments of consciousness, he thought about the life he had led, the places he’d been, the faces he’d had and touched and ran from and loved. He did not think about what he’d done. He dared not look at what could have been.

His ship, too, was bruised and battered. But she did dare to look, and saw a decision she had made, she would make; saw the lives and the loves and the dangers left to come, and how it would all stop here if she didn’t intervene. Here, in this timeline, her thief was dying. It was time.

She summoned the vision and voice and breath of a girl she loved, would love someday, and set her at the feet of her thief.

“Doctor? Doctor, you need to wake up. Wake up and look at me.”

The Doctor opened his eyes, blinking in confusion as he took in the young girl in front of him. “Who are you, and what — what are you doing in my TARDIS?”

He ran his hand through his hair, expecting curls and getting the shorn head of a soldier. He remembered. “You can’t be here,” he said, rolling away from her. “Everyone’s gone. You’re all gone. Just a figment of my imagination. You must be.”

“I’m not. I promise.” She laid her hand on his shoulder, gently turning him to face her. “I can’t tell you who I am, or why it’s important that you listen to me. Just listen, please?”

The Doctor, seeing no other choice in the matter, given his condition, nodded warily and listened as the girl spun tales, told stories of things she couldn’t possibly know, of things he didn’t believe could be.

“So that’s it. That’s what you need to do. Do you understand?”

He agreed.

He blinked, took a breath, and she was gone, the absence of her light a void in the midst of the rubble. As he drifted off to unconsciousness, he heard the familiar sound of his ship taking flight.


	2. Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wibbly wobbly metacrisisey wisisey?

In another time, on a satellite far from the remnants of Gallifrey and Skaro and the Last Great Time War, a Doctor in a different sort of leather coat, with a different head of different (but still closely-cropped) hair laid Rose gently on the grating, cradling her unconscious head against the coral. He staggered to the console, hitting buttons and levers and begging his ship to take them away, anywhere but here, to keep Rose safe.

The loud thump of a body hitting the floor stopped him mid-plea. He rushed around the console, determined to at least put himself between the intruder and an unconscious, defenseless Rose…and stopped cold when he saw a blue leather jacket - and the face of the man he once was.

“Well. To what do I owe this…unexpected visit?”

The man on the floor groaned and slowly sat up. “I had a visitor. The TARDIS showed her to me, told me what needs to be done. You’re regenerating, aren’t you?”

The Doctor in black looked down at the golden energy coursing through his hands, nodding slowly and sneaking a glance at Rose before turning his attention back to the man on the floor. “What do you mean, ‘what needs to be done’?”

“She told me that I— that you— oh, this is complicated, isn’t it? That  _we_  would want to live. That there would be a reason. I didn’t believe her at the time, but…” He looked at Rose, slumped against the coral. “I’m starting to understand.”

“It was her form that the TARDIS showed me. She’s your reason.”

The Doctor grimaced as a jolt of regeneration energy rocked his frame. “My reason? She’s  _the_  reason. I was going to show her so much more…but not now. Not with this daft old face.”

“Now, now. Aren’t you listening?” The Doctor in blue grew impatient and rose from the floor. “The TARDIS, this girl—”

“Rose. Her name is Rose.”

“Rose. The TARDIS and Rose, they sent me here. To help you…to, I suppose, create you. My future, your past - but your future, too.”

“You’re not making sense.”

“Don’t you see? The final blast of the Time War - you don’t remember yet, mental blocks and all, but you will - the final blast of the Time War destroyed everything. Everything.”

“I know that, but what—”

“Let me finish! When Gallifrey was destroyed, the Eye of Harmony went with it - and as it turns out, the Eye of Harmony didn’t just give us our ability to time travel - it impacted regeneration as well.”

The Doctor in black looked up, shock spreading across his face.

“Now you’re getting it. Gallifrey is gone, and I’m dying too - but I can’t regenerate. But you, Doctor, you have the Vortex coursing through you, right alongside regeneration energy. It’s exactly what we need. The only way for me to regenerate - to become you - is for you to channel that energy into a biomatching receptacle of sorts.”

“You mean you.”

“Yes, of course. Are there other Time Lords available? As I was saying, you channel it into me, I become you, and so on. But beyond that - possibly more important than that - you  _live_. You live a life, in this body, with this…how did you put it? Ah, yes, this ‘daft old face’. You and your Rose. You know that’s worth living for, right?”

Tears welled in two nearly identical, yet so different, sets of icy blue eyes.

“Yeah. Yeah, I do. Okay. What do we need to do?”

“Take my hand.”

—

With a single touch, the energy of the vortex and the Doctor’s impending regeneration flowed from one to the other, from black into blue. And in the moment before their faces became mirror images of each other, the Doctor watched as his former self blinked back to his own timeline. And he remembered.

The Doctor turned and laid a hand on the console, sending waves of gratitude to his ship. Then, with a soft smile in Rose’s direction, he walked slowly around the console and set course for Barcelona.

—

As she launches into the vortex, the TARDIS looks at the timelines that could have been - regeneration, a chance encounter between her Doctor’s Fifth and Tenth incarnations, a Time Lord taking the fate of the universe into his own hands - and looks at what will be now - years of her Rose and her Doctor - and sighs a mechanical sigh. In this tiny little timeline, in this insignificant corner of the universe, all is right in her world.

Now when Rose Tyler dreams, she dreams of blue eyes - sometimes twice over, which she doesn’t understand. She dreams of places like Barcelona and Pylea, of adventures she never had the chance to have with a man she didn’t have enough time to love. Now when Rose Tyler dreams, she smiles.

And so does the TARDIS, in her own way.


End file.
